February 2017…

SOTA activation with MTR5B and EFHW

It's been a bit of a SOTA extravaganza this month starting with a cheeky activation of my local summit (G/SE-001 Walbury Hill) to record a video of a CW SOTA activation using the MTR5B and EFHW.

At the end of February I took my annual pilgrimage with James, M0JCQ to the English / Welsh borders in Powys & Shropshire to activate our 'famous five' in a single day. This comprises of the following 2 point summits:

Corndon Hill GW/MW-013

Stiperstones G/WB-003

Long Mynd - Pole Bank G/WB-005

Brown Clee Hill G/WB-002

Titterstone Clee Hill G/WB-004

This year we 'upped the ante' by stopping for a Full English breakfast at the guest house before starting our day and then operating 2m SSB. The first year we attempted this challenge we operated HF and had no problems making contacts but the setup and breakdown of the station takes some time and adds to the length of each activation. The second year we tried this we struggled to make HF contacts on our first summit (likely due to a solar CME) and were forced to resort to a 2m FM handheld which proved very successful. Based on this we opted to work predominantly 2m SSB this year and had no problem pulling in contacts to activate each summit.

Weather in February is always going to be a challenge and this year didn't disappoint...on the skirts of Storm Dorris we enjoyed a fair few showers and very strong winds which made holding the 4m fishing pole mast and 2m SOTABeams Yagi a bit of a handful at times.

We soon got into a rhythm of James managing the mast, me managing the logging and then swapping the microphone every QSO or two to make sure we both worked the requisite number of stations (minimum 4 to count as an activation).

Thanks to everyone that took the time to chase us...we love you all!

If you'd like to know more about the summits we activated see the document below which details each one.